UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has called on the international community, especially those whom he said have “influence” on the parties to the conflict in Sudan, to take “decisive and immediate” action to stop the fighting and safeguard humanitarian operations.
Last April, clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by Abdulfattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces headed by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo following weeks of tension.
Griffiths said in a statement published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Action (OCHA) that nearly nine months of war have tipped Sudan into a downward spiral that only grows more ruinous by the day.
He noted that as the “conflict spreads, human suffering is deepening, humanitarian access is shrinking, and hope is dwindling.”
Nearly 25 million people across Sudan will need humanitarian assistance in 2024, “the bleak reality is that intensifying hostilities are putting most of them beyond our reach,” he said Thursday.
- Serious threat
He said that hostilities reached the “country’s breadbasket” in al-Jazirah State, putting more of the population “at stake.”
More than 500,000 people have fled fighting in and around the state capital, Wad Medani, long a place of refuge for those uprooted by clashes elsewhere.
Ongoing mass displacement could also fuel the rapid spread of a cholera outbreak in the state, with more than 1,800 suspected cases reported there so far.
“The same horrific abuses that have defined this war in other hotspots – Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan – are now being reported in Wad Medani.”
Accounts of widespread human rights violations, including sexual violence, “remind us that the parties to this conflict are still failing to uphold their commitments to protect civilians.”
Given Wad Medani’s significance as a hub for relief operations, the fighting there – and looting of humanitarian warehouses and supplies – “is a body blow to our efforts to deliver food, water, health care, and other critical aid,” Griffiths pointed out.
- Regional stability
Top UN officials reported that about 25 million persons across Sudan will need humanitarian aid in 2024. However, the intensified hostilities make it more difficult for them to reach the aid.
Deliveries across conflict lines have ground to a halt. The cross-border aid operation from Chad continues to serve as a lifeline for people in Darfur, and efforts to deliver elsewhere are increasingly under threat.
Griffiths also warned that the escalating violence in Sudan is also imperiling regional stability.
The war has unleashed the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting the lives of more than 7 million people, some 1.4 million of whom have crossed into neighboring countries that already host large refugee populations.
